


Mount To The Sky

by Kian



Category: Black Widow (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Canonical Child Abuse, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kid Natasha Romanov, Marvel 616/MCU Crossover, Red Room, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, Winter Soldier as Natasha's Mentor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-06
Updated: 2015-01-06
Packaged: 2018-03-06 08:28:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3127886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kian/pseuds/Kian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She is a little girl, delicate with the first blush of womanhood, and possessed of the solemn brutality of a wild animal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mount To The Sky

**Author's Note:**

> This story forms a sort of an uncomfortable bookend with "Visions of Sugar Plums," and the title is similarly pulled from the poem "'Twas the Night Before Christmas." The whole stanza goes: "As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly, when they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky." Just to be clear, this little drabble is very hand-wavy crossing the comics' canon with the MCU, as we don't know quite yet what Natasha's official canon will be in the movie-verse. As such, this version of Natasha was a child when she trained in the Black Widow program with the Winter Soldier and they formed a mentor/mentee relationship. (And, for the purposes of this story, that is all.) 
> 
> Un-betaed, so let me know if anything is physically painful.

She is a little girl, delicate with the first blush of womanhood, and possessed of the solemn brutality of a wild animal.

She was one of many, is now one of several. She and her sisters are peerless perfection, fully tested where so many others are merely tried. He has made them in his image, as much as that is possible, and the ones who hold all their leashes have deemed his work good.

She is the only one who knows his preference for her, a little piece of his dysfunction that he shares with the little pieces of delicacy in her. She is the only one who realizes that he has given her ever so slightly more than her sisters, has insured her survival so far as he can with the benefit of his long experience doing exactly what he has been training her for.

Not enough — never enough — to fully risk himself, but enough that at least with her sisters, _she_ will never fully be risked. In time, that edge will dull without the benefit of constant attention, but he has trained her better than to indulge inattention. The responsibility for maintaining her edge is her own, but he has given her slightly better tools for the job, and she knows it.

It is a gift given out of instinct. Many of the girls who have been disposed of along the way had ultimately lacked the capacity for what was desired of them. It is not a universal trait, he knows well enough, to be able to harness violence as he does. Those who had succeeded in continuing their training very frequently possessed that trait, but lacked in ways that — while it did not concern their masters — would ultimately make them no better than dogs, mad with pain and willing to bite any hand so long as they were fed.

This one, though. This one he has made into a wolf. A hunter in her own right. One who will someday slip her lead and bite only who she pleases.

She is his master work, but unlike with the instruction of her sisters, her development has merely built on what was already there, carving an existing masterpiece from a flawless block of marble, bringing forward what was innate. Her sisters had required breaking and refashioning, but this one has never been anything but whole. She is a terrible thing; a beautiful potential, his delicate razor.

His single greatest act of defiance.

She carries that secret in her dark eyes, values the gift and protects it from exposure.

She never thanks him, not even on the day that they take him away, the program complete. They line her and her sisters up in the snow, watching as they strap him into his uniform and equipment, and usher him to his waiting transport.

One of their handlers, one of their leash-holders, speaks. Full, thick words, meant to rile the assembled collection of newly-minted fighting dogs, bring them to a frothing, snapping rage in the direction of their first assignments.

But not little she. She stands in the snow, crimson hair whipping her ruddy cheeks in the wind, and watches him through the glass of his window in the truck. Calm, steady, solemn eyes.

He watches her in return, and as the engines of the transport roar to life, as the leash-holder concludes his speech, and as her sisters snarl and spit in euphoric savagery at the prospect of being turned loose, she lifts her little chin in acknowledgment of his gift, of what he has given her.

He turns away, contented.

* * *

end

 


End file.
